![]() It took 16 years for me to finish the book. WHITEHEAD: Actually, I was pretty reluctant to immerse myself into that history. Why did you want to write a novel about slavery and escaped slaves? Had something happened in your life that made you want to immerse yourself in that history? GROSS: That's from the opening of Colson Whitehead's new novel "The Underground Railroad." Two yellow-haired sailors rode Ajarry out to the ship - humming, white skin like bone. Who knew what brand of mutiny his captives might cook up if they shared a common tongue? This was the ship's final port of call before they crossed the Atlantic. The captain staggered his purchases, rather than find himself with a cargo of singular culture and disposition. The ship called The Nanny was out of Liverpool and had made two previous stops along the Gold Coast. Able-bodied men and childbearing women fetched more than juveniles, making an individual accounting difficult. It was hard to say how much they paid for her in Ouidah, as she was part of a bulk purchase, eighty-eight human souls for 60 crates of rum and gunpowder, the price arrived upon after the standard haggling in Coast English. Her mother had died years before.Ĭora's grandmother was sold a few times on the trek to the fort, passed between slavers for cowry shells and glass beads. The survivors from her village told her that when her father couldn't keep the pace of a long march, the slaver's stove in his head and left his body by the trail. As she stared into the black doorway, Ajarry thought she'd be reunited with her father down there in the dark. Dahomeyan raiders kidnapped the men first then returned to her village the next moon for the women and children, marching them in chains to the sea two by two. The dungeon stored them until the ships arrived. And the water dazzled after her time in the fort's dungeon. Cora's grandmother had never seen the ocean before that bright afternoon in the port of Ouidah. (Reading) The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no. Let's start with a reading from "The Underground Railroad."ĬOLSON WHITEHEAD: Sounds good. His new novel, "The Underground Railroad," begins with a prologue of sorts, telling the story of Cora's grandmother Ajarry, who was kidnapped from her African village, shipped to America and enslaved.Ĭolson Whitehead, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Whitehead has told a story essential to our understanding of the American past and the American present.Ĭolson Whitehead previously joined us on FRESH AIR to talk about his novel "Zone One" about a zombie plague - he loves science fiction - and his memoir, "The Noble Hustle," about high stakes poker. Reviewing the book in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani described it as a potent, almost hallucinatory novel that leaves the reader with a devastating understanding of the terrible human costs of slavery. That's one of many liberties Colson takes with the real past. The Underground Railroad, in Whitehead's reimagining, is literally a railroad with underground tracks and locomotives making stops in different states. "The Underground Railroad" is about a slave named Cora who grows up on a Georgia plantation and, at the age of 15, escapes through the Underground Railroad. ![]() Yesterday, The New York Times published a lengthy excerpt in a special stand-alone section. My guest Colson Whitehead isn't used to his books getting quite the attention he's getting for his new novel "The Underground Railroad." It's the new selection for Oprah's Book Club.
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